Felted Posey Pot

Recently I purchased a feltmaking kit from my favourite local sewing shop - Clothkits. The felting kit was made by Gillian Gladrag.

The felting kit contains all you need to get started with feltmaking – a large bamboo mat, a piece of netting, and an assortment of dyed wool roving.

felt posey pot
I also purchased a kit for making a handfelted purse.

felting kit

The purse kit contained enough dyed wool roving for making the purse, full how-to instructions and a plastic template that was used to shape the purse.

I followed the instructions for making the purse – and it did turn out as the instructions said it would. However, I was not entirely happy about the finished size. I thought it was a bit too small to make much of a purse. I tried to stretch the felt to make it larger, but it was too thick. This was my mistake – not the maker of the kit. I think I should have used thinner layers of felt as I was laying them out on the felting surface. Then it would have been much easier to stretch the purse into a larger shape.

Felted Flower Pot

But all is not lost – I decided to reshape the purse into a flower pot instead and fill it with felted flowers.

How to Make the Felted Flower

To make the felt flowers, I felted a few different coloured pieces of felt. I made these much thinner this time so that they would be very pliable. The felt squares were approx 8 – to 10 inches in size.

Once the squares were felted using the rolling mat, I continued the felting process by dipping the squares alternately in hot and cold water to felt them further to quite a firm stage. The felt squares shrunk a bit more to about 5-6 inches.

I folded the felt piece in half and half again, and cut out a circular, petal shape from the centre leaving about an inch of trim around the outside.

The inner circle will be the base of the flower, and the outer trim the petals.

Arrange the petal trim around the base of the flower, starting with the outside and working your way in.

Begin to needle felt the petal trim to the base of the flower, felting along the inner edge, and leaving the outer edge loose, as petals.

Keep felting your way along to the centre of the flower, arranging the petals in a circular shape into the middle. Use the felting needle until the petals are firmly in place.

Turn the flower over and using the felting needle, felt the bottom of the flower so that it is firm and holds the petals in shape. Needle felt a few indents into the flower so that the bottom of the flower doesn’t lay flat but is also shaped.

And to add a finishing touch, felt a bit of black wool into the centre of the flower.